[Translators-l] many costly analyse the function phone call.

[Siebrand Mazeland]

So I thought of a very short answer in this mail, and I decided not to write it.

Then by some associative browsing, looking into an error reported using the excellent ForeignAPIRepo functionality, I came across Tim Shell's user page on the English Language Wikipedia[1]. I went on and did a few other things, and decided it might be an interesting read. When I was done reading, I decided to reply to your e-mail anyway. All credits for the reply should go to Tim Shell. Flames can be addressed to me.

MediaWiki localisation moves asymptotically towards perfection. At any given moment, there is stuff we don't have, factual errors, etc. As MediaWiki localisation grows, and moves closer to perfection, errors and shortcomings grow smaller. MediaWiki localisation is thus a process, rather than an end state. Criticizing MediaWiki localisation for errors and shortcomings that exist now misses this point entirely.

What is preferable: An authoritative MediaWiki localisation that is 99.9% accurate, but which costs $300,000 a year to maintain? Or a MediaWiki localisation that is 95% accurate, but which costs maybe $5,000 a year to maintain? And that, on this much smaller budget, will grow more accurate every year? And that, because it does not demand perfect accuracy, is able to cover a much broader range of topics? And that, on top of this, is free?

Cheers! Siebrand

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:TimShell

-----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
Van: translators-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:translators-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] Namens Anders Wegge Jakobsen
Verzonden: zaterdag 2 augustus 2008 15:14
Aan: translators-l at lists.wikimedia.org
Onderwerp: [Translators-l] many costly analyse the function phone call.


 I wonder how many of the translations from translatewiki that shows such an outstandig quality as <http://translatewiki.net/wiki/MediaWiki:Expensive-parserfunction-warning/da>
does.

 The attempt at translating the original text, "Warning: This page contains too many expensive parser function calls." to danish is actually worse than what Googles translator suggests. An attempt to translate back to english from the munged attempt at danish is something like "Warning: This page also contains many costly analyse the function phone call."

 I think that the basic assumption that chinese horde translation is viable should be re-evaluated.

--
// Wegge
<http://blog.wegge.dk> - Her hænger jeg også ud.
<http://geowiki.wegge.dk/wiki/Forside> - Alt om geocaching.
Bruger du den gratis spamfighther ser jeg kun dine indlæg *EN* gang.

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